Well, it took about an hour and a half, but one of the back benchers in the WH Press Corpse finally asked Gibbs if it mattered to the WH that an American was among one of the flotilla dead. The previous hour and a half was dedicated to questions from the beltway pretty boys dealing with perceptions of whether the President is engaged enough in the oil spill and tough enough on BP, whether or not Gibbs had watched Jon Stewart last night, and the usual important stuff. The response from Gibbs when finally asked was so evasive and noncommittal that I can’t remember anything other than his mentioning that Obama had a good talk with Erdogan two days ago.

It must be really odd to be a foreigner watching the reaction of the American government. You look at Turkey, and they seem to be just furious that Israeli soldiers stormed onto a non-Military vessel on the high seas and shot up some of their citizens, but the United States seems to be wholly indifferent. What people don’t realize is just how nuanced America has become about citizenship.

When we decide if someone is a real American, worthy of all aspects of citizenship and defense by the government, we look at the totality of the situation. We look at what kind of citizen you are, what you believed in, what you were doing at the time you were shot four times in the head at close range by a foreign army as they stormed a ship in international waters, and a variety of other factors. For example, as the Powerline points out, this guy wasn’t a “real American” anyway:

The facts are not entirely clear, but it appears that Dogan was born in the United States to Turkish parents who returned to Turkey not long thereafter. (The ABC story says he was two years old.) Apparently Dogan had lived in Turkey with his family since that time. He apparently was, in other words, a “birthright citizen,” solely by virtue of the fact that his parents were residing in the U.S. when he was born.

If that is the case–and, again, the facts are not yet entirely clear–it is silly to call him an “American of Turkish descent.” He, like the other members of his family, was a Turk. The idea that his presence among the dead raises a special diplomatic problem is absurd; if it does, it shouldn’t.

Not only was he not an American, but we should tinker with the Constitution so this never happens again. Now had his parents emigrated to a more American country when he was two, like, for example, Israel, then this story would be a lot different. But as it was, it is clear that he was not sufficiently American for our government to get upset about his death.

Second, you have to look at what Dogan believed in to establish his American credentials. He was against the Israeli blockade, and as we all know, there is nothing more un-American that opposing Israeli policy. Had he been doing something more real American, like delivering bibles to Iran or proselytizing in Yemen, then we could be outraged over his death. As it was, he had it coming.

I hope this clears things up for our foreign friends, and it makes complete sense that no one in our government would care enough to even mention his death publicly. It really is a question of nuance.

Well, let’s not forget that this is the administration that thinks it’s OK to assassinate American citizens if they’re suspicious/Muslim enough — why should they have an issue with Israel doing the same?

For true giggles, you should mention the splinter sect of the birtherism movement that holds that Obama was born in Hawaii but wasn’t a natural born citizen because either (a) his father was black not a citizen or (b) his mother was somehow too young to be able to pass on her citizenship, or something like that.

He was against the Israeli blockade, and as we all know, there is nothing more un-American that opposing Israeli policy. Had he been doing something more real American, like delivering bibles to Iran or proselytizing in Yemen, then we could be outraged over his death. As it was, he had it coming.

If only there was video of him spitting on a Congressman because of health-care reform. We’d be preparing an invasion. Of whom, I’m not sure. Probably Iran, ’cause why not, right?

Israel has a real good thing going with US. They can kill American citizen and ask for money from US and US will give it. Our govt (Dem or Retards), both are proud to have Israel as an ally and support almost whatever Israel does.

Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza on 16 March, 2003, as she tried to stop it demolishing a Palestinian home. The family of the US activist blames the Israeli military for her death and is forcing the country to defend itself in court.
__
Tom Hurndall was a 21-year-old photojournalism student who traveled to the Gaza Strip as part of the International Solidarity Movement. He was shot in the head in April 2003 by an Israeli army sniper while trying to rescue Palestinian children in the street. He never regained consciousness and died nine months later in a London hospital.
__
British cameraman James Miller,34, was shot dead by another soldier from the same Israeli unit just a mile away three weeks later. He was in Rafah while making a documentary for a US cable channel. An autopsy confirmed he was almost certainly killed by an Israeli soldier, despite the army’s assertions to the contrary. Video evidence clearly showed Miller and his team carrying white flags and shouting to Israeli soldiers that they were British journalists.
__
Tristan Anderson,38, had three brain operations after being shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister by Israeli security forces on 13 March 2009. Anderson, who survived with major brain damage, was in the West Bank village of Nilin, protesting with Palestinian farmers against the construction of Israel’s “separation wall”.

In the case of James Miller, a British jury found the Israeli sniper responsible for Miller’s death, and the British Attorney General formally requested Israel prosecute the shooter. But then, Britain’s well known to have been completely taken over by radical Muslim immigration and infiltration.

Then, of course, you have Elian Gonsalez who was *really* an American citizen even though he wasn’t born here and neither were his parents. This shit is confusing.

aimai

–I really, really, really like the idea of having a box to check that shows degrees of citizenship from “insufficient” to “sufficient” and maybe there should be one or two on the high side like “realio-trulio” or “super secret”

I love how the idiots who are putting scare quotes around “birthright citizen” and sneering at the crystal-clear language of the Fourteenth Amendment are the very same ones who claim they are committed firmly to an original-intent reading of the Constitution.

I have no snark for this because it’s just too sad and disgusting to me that the idea of who is and isn’t a real American has been so warped, especially after the whole ‘real ‘Murkin’ shtick of the last election. However, I did laugh at license to kill time’s comment at number three, so there is that.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai petitioned Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to help him revoke the Israeli citizenship of Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zuabi, who took part in efforts to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza on a flotilla of aid ships earlier this week…
__
…In recent days,” Yishai wrote to Weinstein on Thursday, “Israel’s citizens have witnessed how an Israeli member of parliament, Hanin Zuabi, headed a group of terrorists who aimed to hurt Israel Defense Forces soldiers, under the protection of her parliamentary immunity.”
__
Yishai asked Weinstein for his help as the Supreme Court had ruled that an interior minister cannot revoke a person’s citizenship without the written authorization of the attorney general.
__
“MK Zuabi used her immunity as a cloak to protect her from the law, although she was undoubtedly aware of the activists’ preparations for the attack against IDF troops,” Yishai wrote. “This is a premeditated act of treason, and there is documented proof of this.”

An “attack on IDF troops”.

Similarly, innocent people shot by police are premeditated bullet thieves.

@TR: Yeah, we no longer should be surprised when these guys directly contradict themselves again and again and again. The only first principle remaining to conservatism is “Liberals are evil”. It’s all snarling rage and unrestrained hate and unapologetic ignorance.

Blow into the Americanalyzer attached to this Census form to assess your level of American-ness. Results will be kept private unless you score below truebluio, in which case you will be deported immediately and/or executed in cold blood for being Insufficiently American.

I generally like nuance, but this particular kind disturbs me deeply. The potential outcomes of this type of thinking are never happy ones.

That aside, if only he had a pregnant teenage daughter and an inability to speak standard English while employing a pseudo-Canadian accent, he’d be considered a real American. Those are constitutional requirements now, dontcha know?

@El Cid: Am I being pedantic if I point out that amendment means not part of the original, so their beloved amendments also aren’t….Oh, never mind. There is no use applying logic to this, is there?

As a daughter of two immigrants, I would also like to ask, when does this ‘he was only born here’ thing end? With my children if I had them? Does the fact that I’ve lived in the States for my entire 39 years mean I’m an authentic American? The questions, there are so many!

Less than 8 hours after finding out that an American was killed by our special ally the guy is officially declared not-really-an-American by our intrepid press. By this time Monday morning, all the bobbleheads will be in agreement and we won’t have to bother ourselves with this silly detail.

@Calouste: Damn. That’s gonna take much more effort and time and, quite frankly, interest than I possess. I guess I should look into the possibility of citizenship in Taiwan. Or Canada. Any Canadians wanna get fake-married, but for realz?

Another American on the ship went partially blind when she was tear-gassed in the face. She is a college student, apparently, about 7 years older than I.

Sigh.

@Ed Marshall-

“I bet Powerline would be hating on the guy worse if he was American born to WASP parents and never set foot outside the country before in his life.”

Marty Peretz got off on a similar tear yesterday about a kid from MA who is the son of a decorated Vietnam vet. The kid was not killed but has not been heard from. So Peretz, after throwing in the bit about the dad’s service, goes, “What was his seed doing in the Med. Sea?”

–Are the lives of Israelis more important than Americans? Or maybe,
–Do Israeli come before those of Americans? At what point?

My answer:

Yes and yes, if the American is perceived to be liberal, possibly Muslim and a dirty f*cking hippie activist on a ship that is giving aid to those terrorist women and children who deserved to blown up, burned with phosphorus and buried in the wreckage of their homes (because they let people shoot those laughably pathetic Kasam rockets from a field nearby or something…).

Never underestimate the power of the “Israel is the the Promised Land and Israelis are the Children of God and can do no wrong” narrative in evangelical churches and right wing circles.

I was born in Germany to a German mother and an American father. We left Germany when I was three. If I had been aboard one of the ships of the flotilla and something happened to me I certainly wouldn’t expect Angela Merkel to be jumping up and down protesting.

Everything about every imaginable subject at all times is now subject to being interpreted through the god-damned culture war. Your birth place and supposed loyalty to the right wing paradigm of the moment especially included.

That is the only explanation I have.

Where in the hell can we find a re-set button for the last thirty years?

I knew Marla a bit – she dated my roommate. She was an American citizen only, studying abroad. So we don’t even have the dual-national excuse.

Look – my ex-girlfriend’s parents were total wingnuts. They were complaining about Arizona immigrants and calling Obama a racist back in 2006. They’d never had passports and they had never even called long-distance outside of the US. They expressed disgust that me and their other daughter’s husband were both born in Canada. (We’re both US citizens; he’s been here for decades.) Merely traveling outside the country identifies you as insufficiently American.

The Fair Isaac Americaniness score would run from 400 (agin us) to 750 (totally fer us).

Democrats in general would come in at about 520-540, conditionally American, provided that they behave themselves, don’t get caught in the wrong places, and stand at attention when ordered to do so.

Republicans in general would average around 680-720, as long as they did not try to skullfuck kittens on live tv (cable is okay) or eat babies who did not die of natural causes.

I think a system like this would save time and avoid a lot of ambiguity. Right now I see it as a business opportunity, so I am off to perfect and market my AmeriMeter(tm) Citizen Rating handheld device.

I am equally appalled at our causing or supporting others causing the deaths of anyone, especially those not engaged in combat, be they American citizens or not. To rephrase Dr. Seuss: “People are people no matter how foreign.”

I was born in Germany to a German mother and an American father. We left Germany when I was three. If I had been aboard one of the ships of the flotilla and something happened to me I certainly wouldn’t expect Angela Merkel to be jumping up and down protesting.

Good point. But the Real ‘Muricans in the blogosphere aren’t just adopting a neutral stance a la The White House. They’re insinuating that the kid had it coming.

I really, really, really like the idea of having a box to check that shows degrees of citizenship from “insufficient” to “sufficient” and maybe there should be one or two on the high side like “realio-trulio” or “super secret”

But the ticky-boxes for those should be some kind of tricky wingnut color like octarine (let’s call it UltraRed) so those without the necessary degree of Americanness can’t even see them.

Now had his parents emigrated to a more American country when he was two, like, for example, Israel, then this story would be a lot different.

You know, you nailed it. That’s it, right there. If the kid’s parents had moved to freaking Canada instead of Turkey, we’d be getting the same reaction. But you’re absolutely right, if they’d moved here from Israel, had the kid, and then moved back to Israel, the right-fucking-wingers would be screaming bloody murder.

Hey, you guys have to give more credit to American ingenuity. We are, of course, the country that came up with the idea of the 3/5 citizen. Oh, and citizenship checks if you’re brown in Arizona, but that one’s not all that original. So there’s a lot of shades, so to speak, to this citizenship thing.

On top of that, we invented the idea of (full-fledged, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, ever) citizenship for corporations. So the kid should’ve incorporated himself. Isn’t that obvious?

@Elisabeth: I agree this is a good point. However, it’s the backwardness that bothers me. It’s having to prove one is a good American by…what? I’m not even sure. He may not have considered himself an American. Fair enough. I think for me, it’s the implication that if someone does something the rightwing and/or fanatical Israel supporters don’t like, then that person is, by definition, not American. I was told to go back to my homeland when I was a kid, that my parents were taking the jobs of real Americans, etc. I am a little wary when other people get to define who is and isn’t American.

To be contrarian let me relate this:
__
I was born in Germany to a German mother and an American father. We left Germany when I was three. If I had been aboard one of the ships of the flotilla and something happened to me I certainly wouldn’t expect Angela Merkel to be jumping up and down protesting.

Unless, of course, you were still actively considered a German citizen and if you had no other outlet to have your grievances heard, why wouldn’t you expect the country where you are officially a citizen to respond with some kind of decency and recognition of the meaning of that citizenship?

What you are witnessing here in the United States is a dedicated group of individuals who believe that the Constitutional precedent of citizenship (upheld in 1898 in United States v. Won Kim Ark) is fundamentally incorrect, and that you would not–and should not–even have the inkling to think you could find recourse for your troubles via the same routes other “legitimate” citizens of this country are entitled to.

I would also argue that your expectations of the actions of the governing administration of your birth country are irrelevant to how they should respond to incidents of this kind through their own volition.

He apparently was, in other words, a “birthright citizen,” solely by virtue of the fact that his parents were residing in the U.S. when he was born.

Actually, it’s solely by virtue of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. But don’t let that stop the bullshit train from leaving the station.

Merely traveling outside the country identifies you as insufficiently American.

I have often thought that it should be mandatory for high school kids to do a year of travel abroad. It could be senior year or the year between high school and college, and funded by the government (gasp!).

There is nothing better than travel to disabuse you of the notion that the USA is the center of the universe, and to teach respect and empathy (double gasp!) for people and cultures that are different than you.

I am a little wary when other people get to define who is and isn’t American.

Hey, I’m more than a little wary, and my people have been here since the 1670s (not that that matters a damn; it’s just a trivial fact). What tickles me is that my wingnut brother has repeatedly informed me that I am not a Real American.
My BROTHER. Wingnut = logicfail.

Depends on whether Angela Merkel would derive domestic political benefit from jumping up and down about your unfortunate fate. She looks like a frumpy hausfrau but she’s actually a very cunning politician who knows what plays well in Emden.

Plus, there’s that whole middle-of-the-last-century unpleasantness that makes a German example perhaps not the best analogue to this example.

If this man was born in the USA, he is a US citizen and a Natural Born US Citizen at that.

I doubt that there is anything that the US is expected to do, or could do in this situation.

But, say that the were not killed but instead was charged with a crime, in that case the US would be expected to at least visit him and give him advice as to legal counsel. Possibly Turkey would too, if he is a dual national of Turkey, but there is no question that since he was born in the USA, he is a US citizen. I wonder if he has been paying his taxes?

Even a month out of the country would probably do it. El Salvador is in constant need of disaster relief work and it’s only a four-hour flight from the west coast and most of the south. I could go there a million times and it would still challenge my thinking.

Only the jerkiest of the jerks can see rural poverty in a developing nation and go home and vote for Rand Paul; but if you’ve never left the US, I suppose you could tie yourself in the knots necessary to do so.

@celticdragonchick: I am struck by what you’ve written. It’s true. If a person loves America, but hates people with different ideas, the only way to marry the two beliefs is by declaring the ones they loathe unAmerican. The problem is, the ‘real American’ subset is slowly shrinking, so they are gonna have to scream and hate and stamp their feet even more loudly–and nothing good can come out of that.

Perhaps we should also review which of the 3,000 innocents who perished on 9/11 were not sufficiently American. It would be nice to get that death toll down a tad by rooting out the impostors. No point in keeping it at such a large and scary number if not all of them were truly American citizens. Also, too.

Only the jerkiest of the jerks can see rural poverty in a developing nation and go home and vote for Rand Paul.

But if they had FREEMARKET SPESHUL OBSCURE AUSTRIAN FRIEDRICH HAYEK ECONOMIC POLICIES AND JOINED A CALVANIST DISPENSATIONALEST BAPTIST CHURCH AND MADE IT THE STATE RELIGION, THEY WOULDN’T BE A DEVELOPING COUNTRY!!!!

See? It is all their own fault to begin with anyway, and God/Free Market (they seem to be the same thing any more…) is/are punishing them for their wickedness and lack of true Galt spirit.

At least at today’s press briefing Gibbs gave some good snark on the Emobama question:

At his daily briefing Thursday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs rejected the idea that President Obama has not displayed sufficient passion about the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“If jumping up and down and screaming would fix a hole in the ocean, we’d have done that five weeks ago. We’d have done that the first night,” Gibbs said.

[ . . . ]

“Pounding on a podium is not going to fix a hole in the ocean,” Gibbs said. “I think what the American people and the citizens of the gulf are expecting are results… I’ll leave the emotional psychiatry to others.”

It’s pretty simple actually. Germany doesn’t guarantee citizenship to people that are actually born there and live their whole lives there(they are coincidentally mostly Turkish in origin), while the US Constitution delineates that if you are born here you are a citizen.

Under law the US has an interest in protecting its citizens. This is as true for some guy in Turkey as it is for those crazy fundamentalist settlers in the West Bank that were born here.

The point that everyone seems to be missing though is that there were a number of Americans on this flotilla besides the one killed. Just because there weren’t more killed is irrelevant. The US government should be pushing for answers as to why they were detained just as surely as if they were captured by Berbery pirates or impressed by foreign navies. The fact that the US government is covering for a foreign power rather than defending its own people is what is alarming.

Something I have noticed is that surviving veterans of The Liberty are uniformly called anti Semites, Nazi’s etc for having the temerity to complain about being shot at, wounded and seeing their buddies blown to pieces by Israeli forces.

I find it more revolting that people are using this dude’s american citizenship as a excuse to be extra-super-duper-offended over the incident, as if the nine deaths weren’t enough.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but as in the case of Al-Awlaki, I think citizenship is something you participate in; if you permanently live in another country and don’t take part in U.S. culture in any meaningful way (aside from calling for its destruction, as in the case of Al-Awlaki), are you really a U.S. citizen? We have hundreds of thousands of people lined-up to live here and practice being americans, and some of you knuckleheads are caught up on a slip of paper granted to a turkish child some 19 years ago.

I love how the idiots who are putting scare quotes around “birthright citizen” and sneering at the crystal-clear language of the Fourteenth Amendment are the very same ones who claim they are committed firmly to an original-intent reading of the Constitution.

Silly. The fourteenth amendment wasn’t part of the Founder’s original intent.

Ms Ali was subjected to the same inhuman female genital mutilation practices you accuse her of supporting (because she doesn’t make excuses for cultural practices that are unacceptable in this country, dumbfuck!)

But speaking out against Islamism and the degradation of women makes her (and me) a JAFI. (Never mind the numerous death threats and having to live with armed security etc etc. Pesky free speech, eh? Especially when it comes to offending delicate sensibilities of people who…like to make death threats and murder film makers, nuns and so on)

I couldn’t care less about your JAFI bullshit.

I have been a member of Eve Ensler’s V-Day international for several years, and I stand with her.

Ban the practice. No excuses. NO more God damned female genital mutilation.

It doesn’t make people more upset about the incident, it makes people more upset about the United States government’s reaction to the incident.

You’d expect the government of your country to at least show formal, if not actual concern if one of their citizens got killed by foreign military action, instead of hushing it over like is happening at the moment.

The US government should be pushing for answers as to why they were detained just as surely as if they were captured by Berbery pirates or impressed by foreign navies. The fact that the US government is covering for a foreign power rather than defending its own people is what is alarming.

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons [slaves].

So they weren’t considered citizens then anyway. A minor point, but since this discussion is mostly about who is and who ain’t …

Maybe what this really illustrates is that the discussion of who is and who ain’t goes back a way long time in this country.

Justin: You’re not being old-fashioned. You’re wrong. Citizenship in the United States has a legal definition that overrides anything else. It was written into the Constitution and then affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1898.

Now, if you mean that it’s enough to be angry that a human being was killed, you’re right.

1. White
2. Male
3. Member of the GOP
4. Eat pie Knock back some single malt Glen Morangie Scotch with David Broder Marc Thiessen, Dick Cheney or his batshit oldest daughter, or “Awesome Dolphins” Peggy Noonan at a Roadside Pie Vendor Georgetown cocktail party of His their choosing, and then followed up by a photo op at a Virgina Bar-B-Q.

If participation in politics/governance is important to maintaining citizenship what do you do about a rich, white Republican woman who wants to run for the governorship of a state and who it turns out was not registered to vote prior to 2002? Shouldn’t she have to prove something about her status to get to run?

If participation in politics/governance is important to maintaining citizenship what do you do about a rich, white Republican woman who wants to run for the governorship of a state and who it turns out was not registered to vote prior to 2002? Shouldn’t she have to prove something about her status to get to run?

@wengler: I’ve watched the CNN and MSNBC clips of former US Ambassador Edward Peck (ironically, former deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan administration). He was on one of the smaller boats in the flotilla and gives a great account of what happened, objecting to the language being used by the media to describe the activists and their reaction to the boats being boarded by the IDF in international waters. I’ve already seen a bunch of smear attacks against him, so he’ll probably disappear from view pretty soon.

@Elisabeth: I think it is nationalist outrage being applied unevenly that is the frustrating part.

We invaded Grenada because their political system change ‘threatened’ American students.

And if you are considered a German citizen and soldiers from an ally of the German government attacked your ship in international waters and killed you, Germany would respond. They may not pound a shoe on the podium. Even though you did not think of yourself as German, it would be normal for the German equivalent of the state department to make an inquiry.

American politicians are so afraid of the Israel issue that there are very few overt public displays of disapproval over anything Israel does.

As an American I find it very disturbing that both the left and right can go ape over something done by an American and then when an Israeli does the same it is wrong to criticize.

“Q: What do you think of the American media coverage of this event?
…
A: Here’s the thing. I just got off a radio interview. One of the things that distresses me is the extent to which Israel has been successful in, for example, getting Americans to ask questions as to why the passengers on that big Turkish ship attacked the Israeli soldiers.
…
I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, they were defending the ship against people who were attacking it. You’ve got it backwards. There are civilians, men and woman, on a Turkish-flagged vessel, in international waters. And here comes a group of heavily armed — forget the paintball story — heavily armed guys who are going to take over the ship by force and then take it to Israel, where the passengers don’t want to go. And so they pick up deck chairs and other things to fight off these heavily armed — and by the way, masked — commandos, and somehow they become the attackers. So, that depresses me a little bit.

As someone whose Grandfather languished in a Nazi concentration camp for the crime of marrying a Silesian Jewish woman ( one of the milder work camps), you might think that I would be wholly supportive of Israel. You would be 180 degrees wrong- I think the Jewish state has come to embody much of the spiritual depravity of the Nazis- appearing dead set on dragging the region down in the flames of war. Old Chinese saying: hunt dragons long enough, and you become a dragon. Doesn’t matter to me whether there were US citizens on the flotilla, the act of attacking these boats in International waters seems to be the decisive factor that makes this a media coup for the Palestinians. Bottom line, as always, is money talks; Israel and it’s supporters have lots, Palestinians nada.

Never heard the term “birthright citizen” before. Did the wingnuts just coin that? Is it like the whackjobs who refuse to pay taxes or get a drivers license because they fancy themselves to be “sovereign citizens” outside the law?

@kay: What’s scarier is that so many people are buying that language without a second thought. If the Israelis decide to label Peck a terrorist because he was on one of the flotilla ships, I can see a number of American journalists defending that. Truly scary.

@Justin Runia: American Citizenship is ‘just a slip of paper’ is it ever to early to appease Israel.

I am of a different opinion. The tragedy is what it is. The fact that one of the people killed actually is an American Citizen is important to those who value their rights as an American Citizen. If a person is wrong-headed or misguided I don’t suddenly just rationalize how much of a citizen I think they are.

I don’t agree with the implication that this poor kid was a “turkish child” who just happened to be a US citizen. But I do agree that it would be immoral, as well as illogical, for our government to protest the deaths and detention *only* or *specifically* of its own citizens in this case. In other words: if the act was barbarous, wrong, inept, immoral or criminal the fact that it impacted an American citizen isn’t the real issue for the US given that Israel is a client state. We are implicated and we need to act. This poor turkish/american kid deserves more from us than just being a provocation. But the Obama administration, to our eternal shame, has been willing to kill a whole lot of people, including American citizens living abroad, without benefit of any kind of legal process. So I don’t anticipate the administration pulling the any kind of “shocked, shocked” routine here. The kid is a casualty of a geopoltical strategy that we are fully enmeshed in.

It’s funny because the rather EXPANSIVE definition of “Israel” got my attention right away. They were terming releasing people they picked up and couldn’t charge with anything “deporting” or “expelling”.

I was flabbergasted by that. You’re “expelling” people you dragged there at gunpoint?

Or, are international waters now “Israel”? I mean, maybe we could narrow this down by beginning with what IS NOT “Israel”. That might be faster.

@celticdragonchick: wallah the stupid it burns.
are you also paid (like Hirsi Ali) to bash Islam and sabotage the attempts of american physicians to save little muslim girls from trauma?

Hirsi Ali–First there is the ritual pinprick. This is what Pediatrics refers to as the “nick” option. To give you an idea of what that means, visualize a preteen girl held down by adults. Her clitoris is tweaked so that the circumcizer can hold it between her forefinger and her thumb. Then she takes a needle and pierces it using enough force for it to go into the peak of the clitoris. As soon as it bleeds, the parents and others attending the ceremony cheer, the girl is comforted and the celebrations follow.
There is a more sinister meaning to the word “nick” if you consider the fact that in some cases it means to cut off the peak of the clitoris. Proponents compare “nicking” to the ritual of boy circumcision. But in the case of the boys, it is the foreskin that is all or partly removed and not a part of the penis head. In the case of the girls, the clitoris is actually mutilated.

Lie. The AAP proposed a pinprick in the clitoral hood under local anesthesia.

the title of the post is Why Are American Doctors Multilating Girls?Lie. American Doctors are not multilating girls.

Why would Hirsi Ali, that noble and persecuted defender of women LIE?
Because she WANTS the broken-glass grannies to cut little girls… because its all about making al-Islam look as bad as possible.
And I guess you do too, CDC.
I’m a real celt, my dad is four gen out of county cork.
i’ve ridden with the Galway.
and you are a sukkah.
Hirsi Ali scammed you.

Kay – I will say this too. I have supported Israel and believe it has a right to exist, but I am over it. The country is run by criminal reactionary bullies whose interests are no longer aligned with ours. There, I said it, now will anyone in the government for hire in a combat site do something about it before more of our military men and women die????

…[M]any of those who were driven out of their homeland by the violent Zionist assault in the 1940s, today are living in the cramped and poverty stricken Gaza strip, along with their children and grandchildren.
__
Professor Dershowitz will surely be able to tell us that most Gazans, who are forced, by virtue of Israel’s occupation, to live on about a dollar a day, will be extremely happy to get rid of Hamas. Perhaps he will also be able to explain why Hamas, which has never strayed out of their own homeland of Palestine to fight their occupiers , is branded as a terrorist entity by the United States at the behest of Israel.
__
Or he will surely explain why Egypt has cooperated with Israel on the illegal blockade of Gaza. The reason of course, could not possibly be the billions of dollars in foreign aid paid by the U.S. taxpayer to Egypt to keep that government in line so Israel can continue to brutalize the Gazans
__
The Gazans have absolutely no sense of humor about the situation, but that lack surely can’t be because they are constantly short of food, medicines, fuel, and other necessities of life. They did, as we have noticed, turn more sour-faced after the Israeli military used the entrapped Gazans as shooting gallery targets in 2008, where more than 1,200 civilians were killed by the Israeli military’s tanks, jets, and howitzers…
__
…One more event we can now expect is a letter, to be circulated for signature to members of Congress by AIPAC, denouncing the humanitarian activists for forcing the Israelis to attack and to kill many of their group.
__
I remember when Golda Meir, when she was Prime Minister of Israel, stating in public that she could forgive the Palestinians for shooting at the Israelis, but she could never forgive them for forcing the Israelis to kill Palestinians. After all, it’s all in the spirit of self defense. If it works for the Israeli propaganda machine, it should work for the Palestinians as well.

These kinds of opinions means he’s no longer a U.S. citizen, much less a Real American.

I don’t know what “right to exist” means. As a people? Absolutely. On a specific piece of ground? I don’t know. I don’t have that kind of relationship to a piece of ground.
My family of origin is a little sketchy on details there.
“Oh, we’re from here and there!” :)

I have to go, but I leave you with this question: isn’t it absolutely amazing how unfettered South Carolina conservatives are when detailing their affairs?
Who knew? Imagine how crazy that statehouse is. It’s lucky they’re conservatives, so are limited to legislating on abortion.
They can’t be getting anything else done down there.

Kay – Bleh – on S. Carolina’s political harlequin machine – I hate the sordid laundry, the faux religiosity. People fail, relationships end, new ones start. If the “moral” minority could just take a humanistic look at history and sin and get a life, they would let this shit go. The problem is they are always out there telling people how to live, what to do in the bedroom and with whom. Then they turn around and wonder why their progeny end up knocked up at 16.

Just a bunch of psychos using religion to make themselves feel better about living in a deep gravity well flying around a giant fire ball

But I do agree that it would be immoral, as well as illogical, for our government to protest the deaths and detention only or specifically of its own citizens in this case.

Why?

Governments, especially democratic ones, have an affirmative responsibility to protect & defend their own citizens. They do not have the responsibility to protect & defend the world.

I expect a family to protest the death of a family member louder than the death of some unrelated person. I expect a community to protest the death of a community member more than the death of some outsider I expect a nation to protest the killings of it’s citizens more than the deaths of people from other countries.

I find it more revolting that people are using this dude’s american citizenship as a excuse to be extra-super-duper-offended over the incident, as if the nine deaths weren’t enough. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but as in the case of Al-Awlaki, I think citizenship is something you participate in; if you permanently live in another country and don’t take part in U.S. culture in any meaningful way (aside from calling for its destruction, as in the case of Al-Awlaki), are you really a U.S. citizen? We have hundreds of thousands of people lined-up to live here and practice being americans, and some of you knuckleheads are caught up on a slip of paper granted to a turkish child some 19 years ago.

You’re old-fashioned in the same manner as “Irish not welcome” signs are quaintly old-fashioned.

Depends.
In the case of Elisabeth I´d say she has a legal right to German citizenship. They left Germany when she was three years old and so I assume her mother was still a German citizen when she was born.
If one of your parents at the time of your birth was a German citizen, you can claim German citizenship without any problems. And of course pass it on to your children.
(Which is why most Germans don´t understand the “discussions” about Obama´s citizenship. His mother was a US citizen after all. The birthplace is secondary.)

Of course I don´t know if Elisabeth ever went to a German consulate to claim German citizenship. If she did and had been on a ship in the aid flotilla, as a German citizen myself I actually would expect Merkel to be jumping up and down protesting. :)
And doing her utmost to ensure the safety of Elisabeth.
(Back in the 1980s there were lots of kidnappings in Lebanon. One of them was a guy with Lebanese and German citizenship. His family freely admitted publicly that he got German citizenship only for easier international travel. Kind of like let him free because he isn´t a real German citizen. Still it was the responsibility of the German government to look out for him and negotiate for his freedom.)

In the case of immigrants the German citizenship laws were changed a few years ago and are still a bit more difficult. If you are born in Germany and at least one of your parent(s) lived in Germany for a certain amount of time legally , you are considered a German citizen at the time of your birth. At the age of 21 I think you have to decide if you want to keep the German citizenship or not.
In the spirit of the World Championship 2010 let me present Mesut Ozil. Applause! :)

@maus: How am I being anywhere near as racist or xenophobic as your example would apply? I’m simply noting that having a piece of paper documenting your birth in the U.S. doesn’t make you a functional american–if you don’t vote here, don’t serve here, don’t live here, don’t pay taxes here, why are you beholden to a scrap of paper? Sure, Mr. Dogan would have been more than welcome to move back to the U.S. and engage in these activities, but there’s no indication that he was planning to do that, so I’m calling him a functional Turk.

Note that I’m not claiming his political opinions are a factor in his citizenship, like so many hysterical posters already have, or even weighing in on the latest zionist debacle–but Mr. Cole’s rant seemed like a bizarre formation of American Exceptionalism that I’ve been seeing lately.

The degrading of citizenship by virtue of birth is in full swing. e.g. Rand Paul and GOP friends, etc…

Where does their thinking lead? Let’s take a ride through winger-land, shall we? Hands inside the car, please! Oh, and don’t feed the Limbaughs!

Their thinking leads us to an America where your newborn, bundle of joy IS NOT automatically an American citizen when he or she exits the birth canal on a sunny American afternoon. Nope. We need to see “your papers” first.

(In the meantime, maybe junior or little princess is a “Provisional Citizen”, eh? Don’t touch the public services, kid!)

You parents, just quit your whining! All you need to do is forward a copy of your “little angel’s” birth certificate, along with you AND your wife’s birth certificate (or proof of legal residency, Paco!) to Washington DC.

In Washington, a faceless bureaucrat in a MASSIVE government BUREAUCRACY will handle your child’s request for citizenship in our great republic. Handled in the order it was received, “your papers” will be in the hands of the newly created “CACABA” (Citizenship Approval Conferral & Bestowal Administration)

It’s the CACABA’s job to review your documents for authenticity. Turnaround time will be the standard 6-8 weeks (Longer for Mexican surnames. So don’t get cute, Pablo!)

Considering there are 4 million + babies born annually in the US, (that’s 11,000 a day!) this new “IRS Sized” government department will be busy! But don’t worry. Your little rug rat will be rubber stamped for citizenship in time for their 1st B-Day! (Or, in time for her Quinceañera. Hey, just be thankful you’re getting approved at all, Maria! Er, Sonia…oh, whatever the hell your name is!)

@Justin Runia: I was more trying to state that “old-fashioned” is a appeal against modernity, and completely irrelevant. There is no “US” culture that he needs to be a part of to consider him one of our own. He is a US citizen, and should thus be treated and represented as such.

Thankfully, the US embassy is working with the family, and the “sheet of paper” is providing all that it is obligated to, independent of your opinion.

If I recall correctly, the Constitution isn’t engraved in stone for a reason–as Detlef documented a few posts above, there’s plenty of room for countries to decide a statute of limitations on citizenship granted to people who were born in the country, but end up living their lives outside of it. My original point was that it is cynical (and fruitless) to assume that we would leverage the death of one American citizen to extract something out of Israel, when there is a greater crime involving the state of quasi-warfare Israel is engaging in. Waving the bloody shirt seems to be missing the point when we’re talking about a clusterfuck on the scale of Palestinian apartheid.

@maus: I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense. We grant citizenship for a reason–if there is nothing material to US culture, why do we regulate it as such? This isn’t a value judgement, I’m not calling him un-american, but the fact is that his citizenship is for all intents and purposes a technicality (leaving open the possibility that he would one day choose to exercise that technicality to actually live here and partake in the rights and responsibilities of citizenship).

If I recall correctly, the Constitution isn’t engraved in stone for a reason—as Detlef documented a few posts above, there’s plenty of room for countries to decide a statute of limitations on citizenship granted to people who were born in the country, but end up living their lives outside of it.

Again, this was settled by the Supreme Court in 1898. If you are born in the United States of America, you are a citizen of the United States of America.

There is no statue of limitations in this situation. If you disagree with the law, you are free to embark on a quest to repeal the 14th Amendment.

but the fact is that his citizenship is for all intents and purposes a technicality (leaving open the possibility that he would one day choose to exercise that technicality to actually live here and partake in the rights and responsibilities of citizenship).

I get what Justin Runia is saying. The victims citizenship is brought up as if the administration is supposed to be really outraged at Israel and escalate things now that they know an American was killed. It comes off as very insensitive actually. And while he was born here, he did not live here, nor was he raised here, and I am betting that he had no allegiance to this country. Nor should he. Why should the US take things up a notch just because the victim was technically an American citizen? That’s actually what you guys are saying: “look, look, an American died, NOW can we kick Israel’s ass?” Are you guys trying to make him the martyr or a symbol of something?

And my opinion would be the same no matter where the person was from or what country invaded the ship or which administration was in the WH.

I don’t know Justin’s rep around here, but I have to agree with his original post.

Again, this has nothing to do with Israel. This has everything to do with the American government barely letting out a peep that an American citizen is killed by foreign soldiers.

If you are a citizens of a country you expect you government’s support and protection when you are abroad. It says so explicitly in almost every country’s passport. That includes consular support, visitation in prison and protests against bad treatment. There has been no suggestion that the US government has protested against their citizens being killed or kidnapped by a foreign power in this case. Feeling confident going abroad under the protection of Uncle Sam?

I don’t know Justin’s rep around here, but I have to agree with his original post.

There are very legitimate points in the original post. However, his ideas on so-called “birthright citizenship” are not legitimate in any way.

So I will ask you if you believe that individuals born in the United States are, in fact, citizens of the United States, regardless of their parents heritage or citizenship, and regardless of their love and involvement with the United States.

Why should the US take things up a notch just because the victim was technically an American citizen?

1) Because one of the things a government does is to try to protect its citizens from the whims of foreign governments. Dogan was a US citizen.

2) Because Israel takes a nice big fat check every year from the US government. The very least I think we should receive in return is Israel trying hard not to kill US citizens, and saying ‘sorry, we fucked up’ when it does.

@Elisabeth:
Let me relate to you a story about a murderer in my current state, MD. This is all IIRC, but I think I have it more or less right. It happened a few years ago.

Guy was a young scumbag who murdered a classmate and cut him up into little pieces. His dad helped him flee to Israel.

The MD folks wanted him back here to face charges (1st deg murder, I assume).

What’d the Israelis do? They declared that the scumbag was a citizen of Isarel, because his dad was a citizen. How was his dad a citizen? He lived there…before 1948. I.e., even before Israel was a state.

Oh, yeah, sure, the Israelis put him on trial for murder and convicted him. I think he got a 15 year term.

Our good friends the Israelis, who refuse to extradite on the principle that Jews should never be extradited out of Israel. IIRC they don’t have an extradition treaty with us. Just as, as our so-called “ally,” they have no mutual defense treaty with us.

The victims citizenship is brought up as if the administration is supposed to be really outraged at Israel and escalate things now that they know an American was killed. It comes off as very insensitive actually. And while he was born here, he did not live here, nor was he raised here, and I am betting that he had no allegiance to this country. Nor should he. Why should the US take things up a notch just because the victim was technically an American citizen?

America is obliged to protect and offer aid to its citizens, no matter what you think of his “allegiance”.

That the US embassy in Turkey is working with his family on as much as they can offer is a very good thing. Your personal objections on whether they “deserve” any entitled aid are irrelevant.

Why should the US take things up a notch just because the victim was technically an American citizen? That’s actually what you guys are saying: “look, look, an American died, NOW can we kick Israel’s ass?” Are you guys trying to make him the martyr or a symbol of something?

“an American died”? “a symbol”?

The IDF shot an 19 year old American citizen to death. One shot to the chest, four bullets fired into his head from close range (for the kill, I would assume.)

NONE OF US are looking to “kick Israel’s ass”, so don’t bother. We just want something to change, something that would prevent another atrocity like this to happen again. Is it beating our head against a brick wall of apathy? Sure.

@maus: I love the fact that the IDF edited the metadata to “fix” the problem. How long till “all the other metadata circulating on the web: it was all forged”? Geez, why didn’t they just do the obvious thing and openly claim the cameras’ dates weren’t properly set, which is what “Dave” immediately proposed here. Better yet, why didn’t they let news organizations see the cache, take pictures of their own, and do their propaganda work for them. These guys are clowns and rank amateurs. It would make for a great Hollywood farce if it wasn’t so deadly serious. They remind me of the the Bush crowd, actually: so sure that everyone will swallow their BS that they don’t bother to get the basics right, and so they make unforced error after unforced error.

Besides the fact that the constitutionality of birthright citizenship was settled over a century ago, I think there’s something else that no one here has quite touched on: Dogan’s parents thought enough of this country to have him here, at least. In turn, that speaks to the soul of this country, the very idea of it.

Why does ANYBODY want to come here? I have to assume that, at least in part, a better life is desired.

If we don’t do right by this kid’s family, a bit of that spirit will be lost.

After having made myself familiar with the specifics of Wong Kim Ark, I’m sticking with my point. Wong Kim Ark wanted to return to the U.S. and participate in american civil society, and the 14th amendment was invoked to allow him to do so (good show, hi-fives all around). What I’ve been trying to say is that citizenship is a practice, not a piece of paper that magically imbues the holder with teh American Dream–as I parenthetically stated before, we can all get behind Mr. Dogan wanting to return to the U.S. and vote and pay taxes and do all the great stuff that citizens get to do, but there’s no indication that he wanted to do that, so all these invocations of his citizenship are beside the point.

There’s plenty of righteousness to go around, there’s no need to invoke the stars & bars in an attempt to hold Israel accountable.

Another Israeli Jewish writer in Ha’aretz expresses the outrageous silliness of the current justification of the latest Israeli assault.

…[T]he feeling of helplessness of [Israeli as] a poor lonely victim, confronting the rage of a lynch mob and frantically realizing that these are his last moments, accurately reflect the current psychosis of the majority of the Israeli public.
__
Say that two IDF commandos had been killed in the confrontation [against the aid flotilla]. It would have been another national tragedy for us, but would anyone outside of Israel have been moved? Not a bit: They would simply have been two heavily armed soldiers carrying out an illegal raid who were killed by brave civilians defending a ship bearing humanitarian aid. None of Israel’s arguments – that the members of the Turkish relief organization IHH were actually murderous jihadis, that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, that Israel was prepared to allow the cargo to go through its own port and that the blockade is justified as the only way to keep more missiles from reaching Hamas – would have been any more persuasive. Not because they were badly presented or inaccurate, but simply because moral people around the world see almost everything that happens in the region as a result of a deeply immoral situation that the Israeli leadership and the great majority of the Israeli public is doing nothing whatsoever to change.

Though those arguments are, of course, inaccurate. But since nobody in the U.S. power structure gives a damn, and finds repeating the lies of Israeli militarists a convenient thing to do, they do it.

@Justin Runia:citizenship is a practice, not a piece of paper that magically imbues the holder with teh American Dream…
You can repeat this counter-factual statement in an internet blog comments section as much as you want….. and it will remain unimportant. The U.S. government should not ever give precedence to the interests of a foreign power over the life or liberty of any of its citizens. Your assessment of the “reality” or “meaning” of this dead teenager’s nationality is moot.
The killing of an American, wounding of Americans, involuntary detention (still ongoing?) of Americans are things which would once have sent this nation’s federal government into attack mode.
It should still be that way. Israeli propaganda interests should be secondary to the lives and freedom of Americans.

@maus: Look, we both know that a embassy-backed investigation is going to lead to the punishment of a soldier, or group of soldiers at most; it’s not going to put the slightest dent in the monies the U.S. sends to Israel, at best it’ll end this particular round of siege warfare that “our friends” find themselves engaged in. All the histrionics and pearl-clutching about the United States Constitution, and the Precipice Over Which It Dangles isn’t going to generate a lot of heat, because no matter what people say, they generally don’t live their lives according to Supreme Court rulings–they form a personal opinion over the meaning and purpose of the Constitution. I feel comfortable calling Mr. Dogan a “Turk” the same way I feel comfortable calling CEOs who move their companies off-shore “tax cheats”; sure, technically the CEOs are following the letter of the law, but it doesn’t take a wizard to realize the limitations of applying an abstract document to every and all situations.

@Douglas: Point taken, though some English translations do say “dragon.”

I don’t read German, but I have some familiarity with Chinese, and so far as I know, there’s no Chinese saying of that nature. So perhaps between us we have banged this minor point a little closer to accuracy.

As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say, Civis Romanus sum [I am a Roman citizen], so also a British subject US citizen, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England America will protect him from injustice and wrong.

T]he feeling of helplessness of [Israeli as] a poor lonely victim, confronting the rage of a lynch mob and frantically realizing that these are his last moments, accurately reflect the current psychosis of the majority of the Israeli public.

I think this is true….it is the sort of GW Bush attitude that poisoned our country after 911.
Thing is, both “democracy promotion” and the blockade are having the opposite effect they were intended to create.
The blockade is an attempt to force the gazans to reject Hamas, their democratically elected government.
It is punishment, pure and simple.
The Israelis are like, “well people of Gaza you just have to reject Hamas (who you democratically elected) and we will lift the blockade. Until then, w/e happens is your own fault.”
This is obvious in the bizarrely random list of sanctioned and forbidden items that was published in the Economist.
Consider the Legacy of Stupid the Bush admin left in MENA.
The Iraqis wrote shariah law into their constitution….the Turks are evolving from a military junta/dictatorship that favored Kemalist occidentalism to a representative Islamic republic….like Iran. The more democracy there is in MENA, the more Islam there will be in MENA.
This is gobsmackingly obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temperature.
Bush meant to secularize MENA…..he wound up islamicizing MENA.
And the trend will continue.
Bush spent blood and treasure in Iraq, to the tune of a trillion taxpayer dollars and 5000 soljahs from the finest military on the planet, and wound up with an Islamic state with islamic political parties and shariah in the constitution.
This ironing is delicious.
The west just doesn’t get al-Islam.
The beating heart of al-Islam is munaasafa, justice.
When americans ask, why do they hate us? the answer is….because you are unjust. That is how suicide bombers get recruited.
The Prophet famously said,

A nation can survive without god….but a nation cannot survive without justice.

So, imagine if Hamas had boarded a ship in international waters and shot a Jewish American who had lived in Israel most of his life. Now imagine they shot him in the head four times. Does anyone really believe we would say that doesn’t really count because he’d been living in Israel too long? Does anyone believe we wouldn’t be apoplectic about that? And rightfully so.

punishment
the gazans are being punished for participating in democracy.
the stupid it burnsssssssss.
Israel is contributing a lot of spare parts to the reaver factories.
And the reaver factories are fueled by injustice.

@matoko_chan: Look, I have no skin in the disagreement you’re having over FGM, but this:

and i’ve ridden with the Galway. i bet you aren’t even Irish.

Is fucking pants-on-head retarded. What are you, twelve?

I haven’t ridden a horse since I was four and don’t speak a lick of Gaelic, but the most polite response anyone deserves for telling me I’m not Irish is a roll of the eyes and a raised middle finger.

The really amazing thing about this puerile more-Irish-than-thou one-upmanship is that it’s taking place on a thread where the dominant topic is the idiocy of smug douchebags who’ve assumed the role of arbiting who is and isn’t sufficiently American.

Apparently this flavor of stupidity also afflicts dumb micks who from the way their ancestors were treated in this country ought to fucking know better.

Sunsin and Douglas: thank you for the correction; albeit, I suspect you both might agree that regardless of the qoutes source, it bears some relevance to the issue at hand. Let me give it another shot with another ‘Old Chinese saying’:
“有錢能使鬼推磨 (pinyin: yǒu qián néng shǐ guǐ tuī mò)
Literally: If you have money you can make the devil push your grind stone.
Note: English equivalent:
Money talks. Money makes the world go round.”
This seems to me to sum up why the US will continue to support Israel, although you might scratch out money and write in votes during election season, eh?

Just wanted thank everyone commenting on this thread for restoring my faith. Even though I have many American friends, and know fine well not everyone swallows the Israel = victim kool aid, spending the last few days completely immersed in the coverage of this event has pounded my head. The bias and insanity of US coverage is just too much, it makes Australian and British (dual citizen here – probably not a ‘real’ Scot or Australian) media look like al Jazeera, which is a pretty mean feat.
Was starting to wonder how anyone could withstand the onslaught. So thanks for reminding me of what I already knew. Suspect I’ll be back here often.

31 May 2010: An American solidarity activist was shot in the face with a tear gas canister during a demonstration in Qalandiya, today. Emily Henochowicz is currently in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem undergoing surgery to remove her left eye, following the demonstration that was held in protest to Israel’s murder of at least 10 civilians aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters this morning.

UPDATE 1 June, 8:30PM (GMT+2): Emily is recovering at Hadassah Hospital after two surgeries Monday night. She lost her left eye, three metal plates were inserted into her head/face, and her jaw is wired shut. The bone surrounding her eye socket, cheekbone and jawbone are all fractured. Emily was standing peacefully during a demonstration at Qalandiya checkpoint Monday when Border Police fired a large number of tear gas canisters directly at the heads of Emily and another ISM activist.

The debate about whether or not this guy was an “American” is incredibly stupid. Who cares? If killing him was wrong, it was wrong. Why does his country of birth and his citizenship make any difference?

If Powerline were kicking and screaming because some guy who hadn’t lived in this country since he was two but was still techinically a citizen had been killed in a bombing in Tel Aviv, most people on the left would roll their eyes, and rightfully so. Why is this situation any different?

@Catsy: lawl.
so its okfine for CDC to tell me to go fuck myself for outing AHA as a JAFI….. but im puerile for pointing out the celtic part of her name is a lie?
this IS appropos to the thread, also….who is a “real” balloon-juicer and who is not.
;)
pointing out that the celtic part of CDC’s name is fake because she has no real irish chops is somehow MUCH WORSE than her telling me to go fuck myself because she didn’t fancy me exposing AHA as a liar and a supporter of cutting small muslim girls genitalia as long as she can make a buck off it.

I missed the part where I give a shit about the actual merits of the spat you’re having with insufficiently-Celtic girl. No, what’s puerile is:

1. presuming to know the first thing about the authenticity of another commenter’s ethnicity based on your interactions with them on the intarwebz;
2. arrogating yourself as the judge of whether or not they are sufficiently ethnic as a way of dismissing their argument, and;
3. taking yourself so bloody seriously that you actually think puffing up your chest, spouting Gaelic phrases and huffing about who you rode with makes you look like anything other than an insecure teenager who’s dabbled in genealogy and is substituting their ancestral heritage for a missing sense of self-worth.

Seriously, kid. “I’ve ridden with the Galway.” Lolwut.

pointing out that the celtic part of CDC’s name is fake because she has no real irish chops is somehow MUCH WORSE than her telling me to go fuck myself because she didn’t fancy me exposing AHA as a liar and a supporter of cutting small muslim girls genitalia as long as she can make a buck off it.

Setting aside for a moment the way you’ve begged about five different questions in that characterization–in point of fact, yes.

I would not argue whether being Arab or Muslim is the reason why there is “nuanced” citizenship. Rather, it is the lack of sovereignty of the US when it comes to Israel’s actions.

The fact that one can easily confuse the US and Israel from each other is evident through US’s staunch, unconditional defense and loyal veto against any criticism towards Israeli crimes. But it should not be confused with it’s inability to stand up for it’s own. Simply taking the example of the USS Liberty attack in 1967 as a stark analogy to what happened on Monday morning.

unsurprising that you entirely missed the slam about riding about out with the Galway Blazers…..its not about being Irish….its about being fierce.
CDC isn’t a celtic-dragon…..she is a dimwitted american that got scammed by AHA the Islam concern troll, and she is embarrassed.

but ofcourse, CDC is a longtime balloon-juicer…and im the newbie irish-american-muslimah that calls you guyz bio-luddites and IQ-denialists.
;)

Then, of course, you have Elian Gonsalez who was really an American citizen even though he wasn’t born here and neither were his parents. This shit is confusing.

Yeah, I lived in Miami during that time. His family were pretty much nutters and the whole “Elian is the second coming of Jesus” was amusing for a short period of time. Cubans, unlike other groups, are covered by the unfair “wet foot, dry foot” policy that Haitians and others are not subject to. It’s cold war legacy bullshit.

but ofcourse, CDC is a longtime balloon-juicer…and im the newbie irish-american-muslimah that calls you guyz bio-luddites and IQ-denialists.

I don’t think anyone here cares about your argument to the degree that you think they do, but you could certainly come off as less of a prick than you are right here. “You guys” is tarring every single poster on the site as hating you for an argument the rest of us haven’t paid attention to.

Calm down and chill out a bit, because all the personal attacks are not really making her look any worse and you look any better.

me exposing AHA for a FGM supporter that was farming teh stupid (like CDC) for cash.

This is where I repeat that I don’t care about the merits of your spat with her; they’re irrelevant to my point.

unsurprising that you entirely missed the slam about riding about out with the Galway Blazers…..its not about being Irish….its about being fierce.

Oh, horseshit. Because:

CDC isn’t a celtic-dragon…..she is a dimwitted american that got scammed by AHA the Islam concern troll, and she is embarrassed.

You don’t get to claim that it’s not about Irish after spending at least three comments finding new ways to tell someone they’re not sufficiently Irish, expending reams of text spitting Gaelic at them in order to demonstrate your own authenticity, and in the very next paragraph resuming your attack on the “Celtic” part of their name.

If it’s not about being Irish–and to be honest, I’m still scratching my head about what bearing one’s Irishness has on the subject of FGM–then here’s a fantastic idea for future conversations: don’t fucking bring it up.

but ofcourse, CDC is a longtime balloon-juicer…and im the newbie irish-american-muslimah that calls you guyz bio-luddites and IQ-denialists.

I could give a shit. I don’t know either of you. I just find your more-Celtic-than-thou attitude to be richly deserving of ridicule.

Pro tip: when you’re reduced to taking shots at someone’s choice of pseudonym, you’ve not only lost the argument, you’ve lost the internets. Pack it up.

Yes, we all surmised your gender from the feminine Japanese name (the -ko ending means “child” and almost always indicates a girl) and suffix. Grrr. Very fierce.

That does not mitigate the dickishness of your jihad against CDC’s right to have the word “celtic” in her pseudonym, or your apparent belief that it has one whit to do with the merits of your argument about FGM.

CDC made an on-topic comment about the value of American lives versus Israeli lives.

You responded with an off-topic comment accusing her of “supporting the War on Terror al-Islam by buying Hirsi Ali JAFI-books.” Proceeding thereafter to define JAFI as “Just Another Fucking Islamophobe”.

Clear so far? You responded to an on-topic argument that wasn’t even directed at you by dragging an argument from somewhere else into this thread and accusing CDC of supporting Islamophobia because she bought a book you don’t like. That’s a dick move, and the fact that it’s a dick move has nothing whatsoever to do with your genitalia or the merits of your disagreement with CDC over Hirsi Ali’s books.

I would like to echo and reinforce the appropriateness of that response. It doesn’t matter whether or not your assessment of Hirsi Ali is correct. You did in fact fire the first shot here, and acted like a douchebag in the process. Quit lying about it and find the integrity somewhere to own what you wrote.

@Catsy: sowwy, but i was mortally offended by her commenting on Juan Cole’s thread while ad homming me over AHA and buying AHA’s stupid JAFI books.
IPOF, I think Juan Cole’s commenters should know what a AHA fan CDC is too.
;)

i totally don’t care what you think.
CDC should defend herself.
with something other than ad homs…except she cant.
im furious that AHA scams morons like CDC into buying her books.
that is non-seperable.

Bullshit. You jumped the shark on that, and the AAP can set their guidelines however they wish. It so happens that female genital cutting of any sort is repulsive to most Americans regardless of the religious or social under pinnings. Your attacks on Ms. Ali are pathetic.

me:
She deliberately misconstrued the AAP proposal as a subsaharan ritual of the same name.

First there is the ritual pinprick. This is what Pediatrics refers to as the “nick” option. To give you an idea of what that means, visualize a preteen girl held down by adults. Her clitoris is tweaked so that the circumcizer can hold it between her forefinger and her thumb. Then she takes a needle and pierces it using enough force for it to go into the peak of the clitoris. As soon as it bleeds, the parents and others attending the ceremony cheer, the girl is comforted and the celebrations follow.

Why did Ali do this?
Because she gets paid six figures annually by AEI the neocon thinktank to bash Islam.
Consider why she sabotaged the American Academy of Pediatrics’ efforts to initiate a placebo symbolic nicking to replace infibullation and pharoic circumscision.
If symbolic nicking became a cultural practice in America, it would likely spread to other countries (like our movies and music and tv), and then Hirsi Ali would lose one of her most valuable tools to bash Islam and whip up the christofascists with.
Hirsi Ali WANTS the broken-glass grannies to cut small muslimahs, because it makes al-Islam look bad.
And that is what AEI pays her six figures a year for.

CDC doesn’t get to go Juan Coles and pretend this isn’t going to stick to her.
i can troll her where-evah i please.
i can boxmail her on 4chan if i want.
this is the interwebs.

sowwy, but i was mortally offended by her commenting on Juan Cole’s thread while ad homming me over AHA and buying AHA’s stupid JAFI books.

Let me get this straight.

1. CDC links to a comment she made on Juan Cole’s thread, a comment which is 100% relevant to the I/P topic in this thread and 0% relevant to AHA’s book or the subject of FGM.

2. You, recalling from elsewhere that CDC buys books that piss you off, get “mortally offended” at the reminder that she exists and has opinions, and respond to her on-topic comment with an off-topic attack.

3. CDC responds by telling you to GFY, thereby justifying your mortal offense after the fact and compelling you to begin attacking her pseudonym and accusing her of being insufficiently Irish to have the right to use the word “Celtic” in said pseudonym.

It is entirely possible that the human perception of linear time is in error, and that the true nature of the space-time continuum is that time is simultaneous, circular, or pear-shaped. I further concede the possibility that the purity of your Irish genome confers upon you the ability to warp space-time in a way my Scots-Irish mongrel genes cannot.

Unfortunately I live in the real world, where time is linear and events occur in a given sequence that, once occurred, is inalterable. And in that sequence your claim to have been mortally offended by CDC “commenting on Juan Cole’s thread while ad homming me over AHA and buying AHA’s stupid JAFI books” does not comport with the actual sequence of comments in this thread, a sequence which can be fairly summarized as follows:

CDC: I said this stuff about Israeli and American lives over at Juan Cole’s blog, and I think it’s relevant here.
You: Yeah, well you buy shitty books that support Islamophobia.
CDC: Lolwut? Go fuck yourself.
You: Fake Celt. I bet you’re not even Irish. Look, I speak Gaelic! Blarney Stone!

I have clearly been giving you too much credit. I apologize for the error.

@matoko_chan: The line about Palestinians having to reject Hamas first is another joke. Not because of anything about Hamas. But Israel’s non-seriousness.

It didn’t matter when there were secular nationalist groups. Deals acceptable to Palestinians and the international community were rejected. The PLO was rejected. The pre-Hamas government was rejected. If Palestinians rejected Hamas and elected a government composed entirely of Abraham Lincoln clones, they would be rejected.

I mean, as long as you don’t count sick jokes like Oslo, when you offer a pathetic collection of inaccessible Bantustans and then moan and whine and blame Arafat for rejecting the most paradisical peace offer ever.

i can troll her where-evah i please.
i can boxmail her on 4chan if i want.
this is the interwebs.

yeah, but this isn’t /new/ . argue whatever you want about FGM, but regardless of what you think you’re portraying, you’ve ended up coming off disproportionately obnoxious when you’re discussing anything outside of your main point. Just stick to the topic and chillax.

@Catsy: AHA is a toxic person that doesn’t care if small muslim girls get cut as long as she gets paid.
But the only thing that pisses me off worse than AHA is cretins like CDC that get spoofed by her.
I can troll CDC on on every thread if i like. and i will.
IMHO, she is supporting the broken-glass grannies just as much AHA is.
CDC can refute my argument on substance, or she can admit shes wrong to support AHA.
idc which.
but she can’t run away and compartmentalize what she says on different threads….cuz memes are sticky.
I loathe AHA with the fire of a thousand suns….but i loathe stupid people that get scammed by her act even more.

@maus: CDC won’t stand and fight on AHA and FGM. She runs away and lets others shield her.
So, as a celt, I can reject her.
no dragon, and no celt, indeed.
a coward and weakling.

I think citizenship is something you participate in; if you permanently live in another country and don’t take part in U.S. culture in any meaningful way (aside from calling for its destruction, as in the case of Al-Awlaki), are you really a U.S. citizen?

What do you consider U.S. culture? What is the exact definition of that?

I’m wondering if you would consider the Amish really U.S. citizens. They form their own communities, have their own customs and, for the most part, segregate themselves from “High English” culture. Or is it because they reside in the States that they can retain their citizenship (even though their culture clashes with ours).

The Amish, of course, are just one example of “others” who are considered by law to be citizens but who don’t really follow our “ways”.

What about expatriates who are living abroad for work or medical reasons (affordable treatments for various conditions)? They aren’t participating in American culture in any meaningful way, unless they’re completely separated from the cultures in which they live.

What about those Americans who hold dual citizenships and float between one country and the other on a regular basis?

What is your definition of American culture and how does one participate in it in a meaningful way? I need to know so I can ascertain how American I really am. Thanks.

Fortunately, American citizenship is defined by the Constitution of the United States of America, not any one person’s romantic notions of what it means to be an American.

Why do you and others keep insisting on arguing what American citizenship means to you as if it had any bearing whatsoever on the law or the Constitution? I think our drug laws are shitty, unscientific and counterproductive, but my opinion doesn’t change one single word of Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970.

I’d also like to note that the Amish are mostly tax exempt (on a state and local level) and that great piece of paper some know as The Constitution of the United States of America grants them citizenship regardless of their cultural standing and/or tax status.

Quite frankly I’m annoyed at anyone who spouts garbage about “He’s not American ENOUGH!” for whatever reason. The only reason our Constitution should be amended for any reason is to cement further the rights of the citizenry– which includes all people born with our borders– and not taking them away. As my grandma used to say “Poppycock!”

Wow, okay, here we go: the Amish live here, in america, and while they tend to keep to themselves, they also interact with the general popluace in manifold ways. Similarly, many “illegal” immigrants interact with americans on a very basic level, and I’m going to go ahead and issue the controversial statement that they’re more american than Mr. Dogan, despite not possessing the paperwork that he was lucky enough to possess. You only get to have it one way: either the paperwork matters, or it doesn’t.

The reality is that you’re looking for an additional level of outrage to justify your butthurt at being entirely powerless to stop the blockade (similar to Carville’s misplaced outrage directed at Obama over the Deepwater Horizon spill “why, oh why doesn’t he DO something???”). You could become a single-issue voter on the matter of supporting Israel, but something tells me you won’t.

In other words: you’re looking to make an Achille Lauro out of this, but it won’t work, for the reasons I’m telling you. Mr. Dogan is technically an american in the way that I’m technically breaking the law by not turning in the people I know who buy drugs, or the way that offshoring CEOs technically aren’t tax cheats. You can get a judge to agree with you, but a lot of people won’t.

@beltane: “Have any of you been following this story in the non-US media? When it comes to the coverage of certain topics, we may as well be living in North Korea the propaganda is laid on so thick.”
You have hit the truth right on the head with your statement. Nothing could be more true about the relevancy of our media and our problems as a nation with other nations and our own government. Democracy cannot exist in America with a media as compromised as ours is. And it does not!
Thank you

[…] One of the more disturbing — though predictable — developments this week is the effort to suggest that Furkan Dogan, the 19-year-old American killed by the Israelis with four bullets to the head and one to the chest, is not a "real citizen." That, of course, tracks the prior Joe-Lieberman-led proposal to strip Americans of their citizenship (now being replicated in Israel) and the Obama administration’s targeting of Americans for due-process-free assassinations. We now have at least two classes of citizenship: "real citizens" and "not really citizens." John Cole says all that needs to be said about this disgusting suggestion. […]

The country is run by criminal reactionary bullies whose interests are no longer aligned with ours. There, I said it, now will anyone in the government for hire in a combat site do something about it before more of our military men and women die????

No. Israel has more rights in and control over what was once the United States of America than any mere American citizen unlucky enough to be a goy.

This is no longer the country whose Constitution I raised my right hand and swore to defend “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” back when I had hair. DC has become a suburb of Tel Aviv; Manhattan is right downtown, where the Likudniks can keep an eye on it.

Tuesday, June 8, is the anniversary of the Israeli attack on the unarmed USS Liberty, in international waters, which killed 34 and wounded 171, including those swimming for their lives who were machine-gunned from the air. It is long past time for civilized mankind to say “never forget, and never again!”

Our good friends the Israelis, who refuse to extradite on the principle that Jews should never be extradited out of Israel. IIRC they don’t have an extradition treaty with us. Just as, as our so-called “ally,” they have no mutual defense treaty with us.

They don’t want a mutual-defense treaty with us; IIRC the Johnson, Ford and Bush Sr. Administrations all floated the idea, and it was shot down. The Israeli reich-wing doesn’t want to be tied down by paper; AIPAC is all the “treaty” they need for unconditional, unlimited, unending obeisance.

I wonder how we can explain the fact that a few years ago, when Rachel Corrie, an American girl from Massachusetts, whose parents I believe had always lived in the US and were also born there, as she was, was murdered by an Israeli bulldozer driver when she stood in front of him trying to stop the destruction of homes in Gaza, the US government also stood aside and continued supporting such Israeli policy. I suppose the other aspect–that anyone against Israeli policy cannot be a real American–comes into play there.

Furkan Dogan, raised in a Turkish family and educated in Turkish schools in Turkey, was an American. Millions of undocumented residents raised in this country from an early age and educated alongside Americans in our schools are foreigners.

Ponder that inconvenient truth.

We are not a people. We have no shared culture. Our American identity is defined solely by our eligibility for a US passport and right to vote in federal elections as an adult.

America is obliged to protect and offer aid to its citizens, no matter what you think of his “allegiance”.

You are correct that the US government is expected to protect and offer aid to its citizens. However, consular officials have a lot of discretion in deciding how much assistance to offer. Mr. Dogan is not the first American to die violently. The parents of American citizens who died under very mysterious circumstances in South Korea and China have put up websites complaining about US consular indifference to their sons’ suspicious deaths, one of which sounds very much like a murder that could have been avoided if consular officials had responded to his plea for help while he was still alive.

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[…] One of the more disturbing — though predictable — developments this week is the effort to suggest that Furkan Dogan, the 19-year-old American killed by the Israelis with four bullets to the head and one to the chest, is not a "real citizen." That, of course, tracks the prior Joe-Lieberman-led proposal to strip Americans of their citizenship (now being replicated in Israel) and the Obama administration’s targeting of Americans for due-process-free assassinations. We now have at least two classes of citizenship: "real citizens" and "not really citizens." John Cole says all that needs to be said about this disgusting suggestion. […]